On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 11:54:06AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 08:53:56 -0700, Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org> said:
> > Yes, I found this eventually. I merely suggested that it would have
> > been helpful to have a link in the CFV.
>
> The best time to make that suggestion would have been _before_
> the vote.
I didn't think the matter was worth bringing up on a mailing list, and you
must forgive me if I was hesitant to contact you directly based on the way
you usually respond to me.
> Are you happy with the the RFD that went out recently? Or do
> you think that title too is deceptive, or that the body of the RFC
> (which shall be boiled down into the ballot, modulo amendments) needs
> more information?
Oddly enough, it has the same problem as the 003 CFVs. There is no obvious
path from this RFD which explains the actual changes to be implemented. It
refers to rescinding "`Editorial Amendments To The Social Contract' (2004
vote 003)". Someone who, for example, was indisposed during that particular
vote, would not know what this means.
So our hyopthetical voter (we hope) finds the link to
http://www.debian.org/vote/ in the footer of the message and follows it (a
direct link would have been nice). There, they find a hyperlink "General
Resolution: Editorial amendments to the social contract" which has the same
problematic "The Social Contract text shall be replaced with <monolithic
blob>", and no link to the (much more useful) annotated changes that Andrew
Suffield provided. The 003 RFD did, but there is no reference to that,
either.
You'll note that at no point in this discussion have I accused you of
deception, so there is no need to be defensive about that. This is a matter
of convenience for, and helpfulness toward, the developer community, by
saving them the time and effort of independently searching mailing lists and
web pages to find the information they need in order to cast a responsible
vote.
--
- mdz